


Blank Slate

by TheRaven



Category: Twilight (Movies), Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, Gen, Spitefic, Twilight Spitefic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 12:54:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2812736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheRaven/pseuds/TheRaven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She hunts them instinctively, the things that look like her but are not like her."</p>
<p>This is a character study/interpretation of Alice's early years as a vampire. I am not a fan of the Twilight series, but I find that there are a lot of things in that world that could be really interesting if explored in a way different to the way the canon did. This is part of how I interpret Alice's character.</p>
<p>Some violence, but nothing too terribly explicit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blank Slate

She hunts them instinctively, the things that look like her but are not like her. They are slow, and so warm where she is so cold, and their flesh parts easily under her teeth and fingernails, and when they fight back, they do not leave so much as the faintest scratch on her. They smell like heaven, and their blood—oh, their blood!—flows rich and thick down her throat when she tears them open, cooling the white-hot thirst for just a moment. These creatures taste like they were made for her to eat. Human, her mind supplies for her. They are human.

Is she human? She doesn't think so. She is fast, and cold, and her skin is like fluid marble that glimmers and glitters in the sunlight. The first time she sees it, she gasps aloud at the beauty of it. She has never seen anything like it, but as far as she is concerned, time began when she opened her eyes that morning. There are no memories before that time, and she is not overly concerned about finding any. The hunt and her wondrous body are enough for now.

She notices after the first few feedings that these humans wear much more clothing than she does. Her plain white smock, bearing a worn name tag on which the name “Alice” is partially visible, is dirty and tattered, showing white lets almost up to the hips, and she has no other clothes to wear. How she knows “clothing” is a mystery to her, but she has a feeling that it would be easier to find food if she looked more like her prey. So she salvages what she can from the bodies, a shirt here and a pair of pants there. She looks at herself reflected in water and decides that she looks acceptable enough to try going into the human settlements proper.

Her first time into a town is nerve-wracking. She knows she has nothing to fear from these slow, fragile creatures, but the idea of being chased out does not appeal to her. So she studies them as she moves among them, forcing herself to slow down to their speed, and learns to move her body like she's one of them. It makes hunting laughably easy, and she keeps herself sated to the point where she starts to notice other things about the humans: the way they dress, the way some of them paint their faces and the many ways they style their hair. She keeps mental notes, knowing intuitively that her mind will not let her forget anything, and tries to hunt discreetly.

She has her first vision while feeding. It is of a young man, fierce and beautiful, and, most importantly, like her. The suddenness of the image startles her, but she manages to probe the edges of the vision until she sees more beings like her, a whole family of them. They have a home. And, instinctively, she knows that she could join them there someday, along with the fierce young man. And then the vision is gone, and she is back with the feebly-struggling human who is bleeding out on the ground and wasting his precious blood.

The next vision is also of the young man and the family. She sees them hunting, but they hunt animals instead of humans. Their grace is breathtaking, and she wonders if she looks the same to outsiders when she moves. She understands then that there are other ways to live that do not involve hurting the humans with whom she has become so fascinated, and she resolves to learn their ways so that when she joins the family, she will fit in better.

It takes time, but she manages. Mostly. That she never changes the way humans seem to is unnerving, but she does not pay it much mind. She remains the same fluid marble creature she was when she first opened her eyes, and humans, due to their fragile nature, begin to break down eventually. Of course, that means she has to move around every few years, because the humans start to notice when she does not change over the years, and they get suspicious. And yes, she has nothing to fear, but to make things easier for herself, she tries to stay as inconspicuous as possible.

One morning, she has another vision. It's of meeting the fierce young man in a town far away from where she is currently, but she knows the exact time and place where he will be, and she knows she can make it. By now, she's started to imitate the humans' manner of appearance, and she takes a short pause to buy something fitting for such a momentous occasion with money she earns doing odd jobs in town. The smell of human blood no longer tempts her beyond her control, and she has found that being around them isn't so bad. They certainly have some interesting ways of adorning their bodies, at least.

Of course, lengthy travel is not kind to human clothes, so she waits to change into the special outfit she has purchased until she gets close to where the young man will be. She takes the time to make herself look perfect, because she will only have this moment once, and she wants it to be as beautiful as her visions have been. And, with one last check of her reflection in a storefront window, she puts on her best and brightest smile (she likes the human displays of happiness best and has taken great pains to learn how to imitate them properly) and approaches the young man she knows she will spend the rest of her immortal life with.

“Good afternoon,” she says. “I'm Alice. You don't know me, but I know that we will have a grand old time together.”


End file.
